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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112074">atticus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine'>ballantine</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>noble consuls of rome [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient History RPF, Rome (TV 2005), Βίοι Παράλληλοι - Πλούταρχος | Parallel Lives - Plutarch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Epistolary, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:53:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112074</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A sampling of summer correspondence with everyone's favorite Epicurean.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>noble consuls of rome [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730350</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>atticus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A week early from my normal, informal schedule but as you can see this installment is short.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Cicero Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>Rome, 27 Quintilis</em></b>
</p><p>Pray ignore my letter of the 18<sup>th</sup>; I spoke too hastily.</p><p>Enclosed is Helvius Cinna's newest poem. He showed me an early draft and I proposed a few dozen minor edits; I have included a few key examples that he did not, alas, elect to use in the final version. More the pity. I have also had Tiro copy out a short review, and I was hoping you could provide me with some feedback before I show it around.</p><p>Of course, I barely have time for these amusements! My old friends – my books, that is – shall have to sit unjustly ignored for some time longer, as there is so much to do before the Senate reconvenes....</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Brutus Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>Rome, 28 Quintilis</em></b>
</p><p>...I have not had time to read the new elegy by Helvius Cinna, though many have informed me that his work with meter is without peer. The tribune is a gifted man; his testimony was invaluable during Caesarion's paternity case. I suppose it is my lot in life that I can appreciate his work in the latter instance and must spurn all temptation to render an opinion on the former. Poetry is for next year.</p><p>You asked after the new publicani for tax collection. Are you displeased with my selection? Caudex and Macer are new to the job, but they performed admirably in their previous roles. Never have the Sacred Geese looked so sleek, or been so disinclined to attack supplicants in the temple of Juno. The former tax collector for your region, as you know, was a black-hearted extortionist....</p><p> </p><p><b>Cicero Attico Sal.<br/>
</b> <em> <b>Puteoli, 28 Quintilis</b> </em></p><p>What a disgrace!</p><p>Our consul continues to confound and frustrate. One day he is as Brutus ought to be, and I do not act the miser in doling out his praises to all who may benefit from hearing them – and then the very next he makes me the fool for loaning out my good name.</p><p>Of course some of the reforms are overdue, but I hardly think passing down strict quotas for freeborn shepherds on large estates will appease those so recently bridled by executive overreach. How many times and to how many leaders must I plea for what seems so obvious to you and I? Talking and timing, these are ever instrumental! Some days I truly believe the days of great Roman legislators have passed, and we will forever more be mired in this hazardous place between civil war and despotism.</p><p>No sooner do I see hope for a path forward for the country than it is dashed like a convict's skull in the gladiatorial ring. And often to the same raucous applause!</p><p>Why do I spend my days consumed by politics? I am sickened by them and myself. Therefore, I have made up my mind to absent myself from a city in which I once flourished in the highest position. However, I have not so much resolved to quit Italy—about which I will consult you—as not to stay in Rome.*</p><p>I am too depressed to write you anymore. I hope to hear from you soon.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Cicero Attico Sal.</b><br/>
<em> <b>Puteoli, 31 Quintilis</b> </em>
</p><p>My friend, all is well. Turbulent waters lie ahead, to be sure, but I believe the wind is favorable and my helmsman, keen.</p><p>The decrees for the provincial governorships have been decided – I think this year's strange schedule has thrown quite a few of us off our normal reckoning. I am content with most of the assignments. Brutus assures me Dolabella's 5-year stint in Syria was unavoidable, and I suppose I can see the merits of getting the man away from the city. Our society will certainly not lack.</p><p>However, our mutual friend Cassius was gravely disappointed, as he had been promised the province some time back.</p><p>....</p><p>You say that Brutus asks me to come to Rome before the 1st. He has written to me to the same effect, and perhaps I will do so. But I don't at all know why he wishes it. For what advice can I offer him, when I am at a loss what plan to adopt myself, and when he has done more for his own undying fame than for our peace?*</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Cassius Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>Rome, 5 Sextilis</em></b>
</p><p>You and I have had many a discussion on our shared philosophical leanings. During these conversations you always urge me to cease dividing my personal beliefs from my political life. You often speak sense, but I have resisted this call time and again.</p><p>I attend the tetrapharmakos daily, but it has lost all ability to heal me. Therefore I ask for your help.</p><p>I know that what is good is easy to get, and that what is terrible is easy to endure... I feel the truth of this in my heart. So why, then, am I so continually vexed over my current position? If what is good is easy to get, then why do I find myself in the audience and not on the stage? And if what is terrible is easy to endure, why does that swine Mark Antony yet live?</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Antonius Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>On the march, 12 Sextilis</em></b>
</p><p>...another three thousand of his dead, so it's practically just a mop-up job now. Though it would be too bad to return to Rome without Quintus's head in a basket. Do you suppose the Senate would kick up a fuss if I set a team of engineers to flatten every hill in Hispania?</p><p>Skimmed the new Helvius Cinna while overseeing a decimation yesterday. I remain unimpressed. Someone needs to tell that man that dactylic hexameter is not a challenge to stuff as many references in a single line as the syllables permit. There is a difference between wit and allusion.</p><p>....</p><p>You know, every boy still scrapping around in his purple-bordered toga dreams of what he'd do if he one day became consul. I believe my greatest ambition was to establish Games year-round. This tedious reality of ensuring grain supply and overseeing squabbles between provincial governors would be such a letdown to that boy. When Romulus decided to found our city, couldn't he have chosen a hill better situated closer to decent agricultural land?</p><p>Perhaps I shall propose moving the capitol to Troy or Alexandria. I have no intention of doing such a thing, but I think our mutual friend Cicero's reaction would be very funny. I shall have to wait until I am back in the city, so I may see his expression for myself....</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Cicero Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>Tusculum, 19 Sextilis</em></b>
</p><p>You must be quite anxious to hear some more personal news of recent developments. I have decided to spend a couple weeks visiting my houses in Tusculum and Epirus, and let matters settle where they will before applying my labor to them. And apply my labor, I must. Much as I long to leave this all behind and fly away somewhere, I feel compelled to bolster the few remaining voices of sense and decency within the Senate.</p><p>....</p><p>Brutus speaks with the utmost refinement. But where other men may have sought to rouse the passions of the people to meet this moment, he seems to have decided to put them in a stupor instead. Judged against his own stylistic aims and his conception of the public speaker's ideal, he has achieved a height of elegance one could not hope to surpass; personally, of course, I would have chosen different....</p><p> </p><p><b>Antonius Attico Sal.<br/>
</b> <em> <b>Massilia, 3 September</b> </em></p><p>...he and I were in close communication regarding all the provincial governorships. We had no choice but to give Syria over to Dolabella, but the upside to the poor Syrians' plight is: no more Dolabella in Rome. That alone should net us a Triumph, in my opinion.</p><p>I hear my co-consul has decided to enforce his Stoic disdain for decadence on everyone else's good time. I expect any day to receive news from home that my entire personality has been outlawed. If he's not careful, he'll go down as the biggest buzzkill in the history of the Republic.</p><p>The worst of the summer heat seems to have finally abated....</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Cicero Attico Sal.<br/>
<em>Rome, 14 September</em></b>
</p><p>The news of the collapse of Quintus's army has many in the city in high spirits; I put this down to relief that we shall not be forced to endure another long, drawn out civil war and all its attendant tediums. I had worried that our consuls would demand a Triumph for Antony when he returns, which I think you can agree would be an unseemly show. However, Brutus's good sense managed to avoid his singular blind spot in this instance; no Triumph has been announced. And with the new laws on public decadence put in place, even Antony's hands will surely be tied...</p><p> </p><p><b>Brutus Attico Sal.<br/>
</b> <em> <b>Rome, 19 September</b> </em></p><p>Apologies for this late reply. (I now write this sentence so frequently, I wonder if it would be more efficient to have a stamp fashioned.)</p><p>The reply is not only late, but it is late as I make it. I do not believe I have slept more than five hours these past three days – I do not sleep much. I never did before this, but where I used to spend the nighttime hours reading or poised over some parchment, I now pace my rooms and make plans. It's a tedious exercise, both for my body which misses sunshine and my mind, which misses</p>
<hr/><p>Brutus paused in his writing and frowned down at the words. He hadn't meant to continue on in such a vein for so long. It seemed beneath the dignity of a consul to whine and mope about the stresses of the office, even to one such as Atticus, who is ever sympathetic.</p><p>It was no good; he would have to rewrite the letter out. He hated copying letters, reading and questioning every turn of phrase. At least when he complained aloud he doesn't have to hear his own words after the fact.</p><p>He sighed and crossed the last paragraph out. He tried again.</p>
<hr/><p>I often marvel these days at how inefficient it is to try and plan. How much thought and time we spend making plans – to say nothing of the plans that require anything in the way of material resources, which themselves demand other external calculations – but in the end any plan one might think up relies on the actions of other men, who are never truly knowable.</p><p>Frequently during my nights, I ponder where I would be right now if I hadn't asked my co-consul Antony to join us in our plan to liberate the Republic. Would I still be here, in this room, writing to you? Would Caesar even be dead? Would Antony</p>
<hr/><p>Brutus threw the stylus down in disgust. He slumped over with his elbows on the desk, shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He would have to throw the letter into a fire. A brazier would be no good; perhaps he could locate a volcano.</p><p>While thus meditating on his many failures, he thought he heard someone enter his room. He looked over to the door and caught sight of a mysterious figure sheathed in a long, black mantle.</p><p>The face was hidden entirely by a large hood. There might not even be a face inside it, he thought: such was the thickness of the hood's shadow.</p><p>“What man or god are you, and what do you want with me?” he asked. He spoke quietly, for the hour was late and he did not want any slaves or guards outside to stir. Whether this was to be a vision of ill portent, or an assassin come to end his mortal struggles, he would not have witnesses to it.</p><p>The imposing figure did not move, though he believed the hood wavered as if by an invisible wind. The voice that issued from it was deep and gravelly.</p><p>“I am your evil spirit, Brutus: you shall see me again in the winter.”</p><p>Brutus took that in and kept his self-control. He replied, very level, “I shall see you then.”</p><p>He bowed his head, not wanting to watch the spirit vanish. Winter, he thought. So long away?</p><p>“Jupiter's Stone, you're in a mood. And no wine to blame it on, even. Please tell me you haven't been like this the whole time I was away.”</p><p>Brutus's eyes came up and his heart followed. The hood of the long, concealing mantle was thrown back, revealing a sun-darkened face and a familiar smile, only slightly mocking.</p><p>Antony propped his shoulder against the doorframe and said, “Hail, babe.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*the paragraphs marked were taken/adapted from Cicero's Letters to Atticus, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh and available from the Perseus site mentioned in a previous fic.</p><p>If someone with more familiarity with the structure (conjugation? I don't even know the word) of Latin finds fault with the addresses here, please let me know!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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